Geoffrey Kemp

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Geoffrey Kemp is the Director of Regional Strategic Programs at The Nixon Center. He has had a long career in academic and research communities and the U.S. Government. After graduating from Oxford University in 1965 he was appointed as a Research Associate at the London based Institute for Strategic Studies (ISS) (the Institute was later to be named the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS)). In that capacity, he published two path-breaking monographs on the problem of arms transfers to the third world, especially the Middle East (Arms to Developing Countries, 1945-1965, Adelphi Paper No. 28 with John L. Sutton and Arms and Security: The Egypt-Israel Case, Adelphi Paper No. 52).

In 1967, Kemp moved to the MIT Center for International Studies where he worked for two years on a project for the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency on the control of weapons to the third world. During this time he published an essay in Foreign Affairs, “Dilemmas of the Arms Traffic.” While at MIT, he completed his PhD in Political Science and served as the Executive Secretary of the Harvard-MIT Arms Control Seminar.

In 1971 he began a ten year career as Associate Professor on the faculty of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and was tenured in 1975. During this period, Kemp was awarded the International Affairs Fellowship by the Council on Foreign Relations and a fellowship from the Harvard Program for Science and International Studies.

He spent a year in the Department of Defense in 1975, working with the Assistant Secretary for International Security Affairs in the Policy Planning Department. He then became Consultant to the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and published a widely distributed study on US Military Sales to Iran (co-authored with Robert Mantel). The study highlighted the extraordinary difficulties the United States found itself with in providing the Shah with highly modern weapons against a background of traditional society that was not happy to find tens of thousands of Americans descending on its villages and training its military in ways of modern warfare.

In the late 1970’s, Kemp became a Consultant to the Office of Program Analysis and Evaluation in the Pentagon working for Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Assistant Secretary. During that time, Kemp was one of the authors of a major study on the vulnerability of the American position in the Gulf. Together with Dennis Ross and others, Kemp wrote the first draft of the report indicating the dangers to American interests of growing Soviet involvement with regional countries, particularly Iraq.

In 1981 Kemp joined the Reagan Administration and was appointed as Senior Director for Near East and South Asian Affairs on the National Security Council. Two years later, in 1983, he was promoted to Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. In these capacities Kemp’s mandate included covering many conflicts facing the United States across the region stretching from Marakesh to Bangladesh. He was involved in policy decisions concerning the Lebanon Crisis, the Arab-Israeli dispute, the emerging American presence in the Gulf, and the war in Afghanistan.

Leaving the White House in January 1985, Kemp worked for a year at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University and then embarked on a nine year tenure at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. At Carnegie he ran the Middle East Arms Control Program and published and co-authored several notable books on Middle East Security and growing problems between the United States and Iran. Titles include Control of the Middle East Arms Race, Forever Enemies?: American Policy and the Islamic Republic of Iran, and Powder Keg in the Middle East: The Struggle for Gulf Security with Janice Gross Stein.

In 1995, Kemp assumed his current position at the Nixon Center, where he has continued to publish a number of studies on the contemporary Middle East. He also completed a major textbook with Robert Harkavy entitled Strategic Geography and the Changing Middle East.

Kemp frequently appears in the media commenting on foreign affairs, particularly on issues concerning the Middle East and US Security. The current focus of his work is the growing importance of China and India in the Middle East. In 2006, he wrote an essay summarizing his basic thesis, “The East Moves West” in the journal The National Interest.